Migrant workers warned to leave camp

CARLSBAD -- Migrant workers living in a makeshift camp on
city-owned land in Carlsbad again face holiday-season evictions
this year, as workers say they were warned to leave their shacks by
early December.

There are several dozen workers living in the area south of
Cannon Road and east of Legoland Drive beyond a property leased by
Mellano & Co., a local flower grower. The men said they work as
field hands, construction workers, day laborers and service
industry workers.

Several workers said Tuesday evening that the warnings came from
their supervisors in the fields, but they received no official city
notices as they have in the past.

"The bosses told us we have to leave," said Abel Barselos, a
farmworker who lives in the camp. "But we want to know why."

City officials destroyed similar camps last winter after they
said sanitary conditions were unacceptable.

Since then, the city has been working on a plan to house about
150 homeless farmworkers in Carlsbad. A report put together by a
task force, including farmworker advocates, growers, city officials
and residents, is due to be released next week, said Housing and
Redevelopment Director Debbie Fountain.

City officials confirmed Wednesday that evictions are planned
and they are looking for a contractor to demolish the camp. They
said the evictions are part of an ongoing effort to get workers to
leave their makeshift dwellings.

Last winter, workers were officially warned to leave their camps
by the city through written notices posted at the camps and
distributed to workers.

One of the employers said the orders to evict did not come from
his company.

"We have no right to tell anyone to leave that area," said
Michael Mellano, whose family owns Mellano & Co. "The property
that we lease ends at the fence."

The workers live on a steep hillside, beyond the Mellano
property, where they carve niches into the mud and build shacks
from wood and plastic tarp. During the rainy season the trails that
lead to the shacks can turn into muddy pits.

Some of the men said they moved to that camp area after being
evicted last year from campsites on the northern side of Cannon
Road, near the Agua Hedionda Lagoon. One worker said if they are
evicted from the site near the Mellano property, he will have to go
deeper into the brush.

Efforts to come up with acceptable housing for migrants face a
host of obstacles.

Agriculture land in North County's coastal cities is diminishing
year by year and growers are increasingly hesitant to invest in
farmworker housing. Farmworker housing also is expensive, difficult
to maintain and unwanted by many Carlsbad residents, Mellano
said.

"We're willing to look at anything, including investing in it,"
Mellano said, whose company provides housing for its workers in the
San Luis Rey Valley. "We're willing to participate and talk about
it, but it's a difficult and thorny issue."

Although there is no firm count of homeless farmworkers and day
laborers, a regional task force on the homeless released a report
in 1998 that said about 700 migrant workers are employed in
Carlsbad fields during the planting and harvesting seasons.

In the winter, many of the workers return to their homes in
Mexico, but others remain in the camps looking for odd jobs,
including the few remaining jobs in local fields.

When migrant camps have been razed by city officials in the
past, advocates have led marches and written angry letters to city
leaders criticizing them for not offering alternatives to the
workers.

Barbara Perrigo, migrant worker advocate with the Ecumenical
Migrant Outreach Project in Carlsbad, said she was frustrated by
the news of the evictions because she thought the group had
developed a cooperative relationship with the city.

"I'm shocked at this. I'm discouraged," Perrigo said. "It's
heartless of the city to on the one hand be working to develop this
housing and almost behind our backs push the workers further into
the canyons."

In a separate development, Carlsbad city staff pushed back plans
to discuss the farmworker housing task force report at a City
Council meeting Tuesday.